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Drawing on 16 years of nationally representative survey data from 2007-2022, I demonstrate that partisan gaps—the average differences in public opinion between Democrats and Republicans—have widened on many education issues. The growth of the partisan gaps consistently exceeds what would be expected due to the changing demographic compositions of the parties alone. In most cases, widening partisan gaps are primarily attributable to sorting (the alignment of one’s party affiliation and one’s issue positions) rather than polarization (increasing support for more extreme positions relative to more moderate positions). However, polarization is also increasing on some of the most divisive issues. Among those who are sorting, individuals are overwhelmingly switching their issues positions to align with their party affiliations rather than switching their party affiliations to align with their issue positions.
In spring 2020, nearly every U.S. public school closed at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Existing evidence suggests that local political partisanship and teachers union strength were better predictors of fall 2020 school re-opening status than Covid case and death rates. We replicate and extend these analyses using data collected over the 2020-21 academic year. We demonstrate that Covid case and death rates were meaningfully associated with initial rates of in-person instruction. We also show that all three factors—Covid, partisanship, and teachers unions—became less predictive of in-person instruction as the school year continued. We then leverage data from two nationally representative surveys of Americans’ attitudes toward education and identify an as-yet undiscussed factor that predicts in-person instruction: public support for increasing teacher salaries. We speculate that education leaders were better able to manage the logistical and political complexities of school re-openings in communities with greater support for educators.
While the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the short-term use of online courses, colleges’ experiences with COVID-era online course delivery may also affect the way that they offer and approach online courses going forward. We draw on interviews with 35 distance education leaders from the California Community Colleges system to provide insights into how the use of online education may change in the system going forward. Leaders predicted that post-pandemic, colleges would increase their online course offerings, and that many instructional innovations to online courses from the pandemic—such as the use of synchronous courses—would persist. They hoped that a more prominent position for online education within the system would be matched by more resources to provide supports for online learning.
We evaluate the effects of grade retention on students’ academic, attendance, and disciplinary outcomes in Indiana. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that third grade retention increases achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) and math immediately and substantially, and the effects persist into middle school. We find no evidence of grade retention effects on student attendance or disciplinary incidents, again into middle school. Our findings combine to show that Indiana’s third grade retention policy improves achievement for retained students without adverse impacts along (measured) non-academic dimensions.
When an employee expects repeated evaluation and performance incentives over time, the potential future rewards create an incentive to invest in building relevant skills. Because new skills benefit job performance, the effects of an evaluation program can persist after the rewards end or even anticipate the start of rewards. I test for persistence and anticipation effects, along with more conventional predictions, using a quasi-experiment in Tennessee schools. Performance improves with new evaluation measures, but gains are larger when the teacher expects future rewards linked to future scores. Performance rises further when incentives start and remains higher even after incentives end.
We study teachers’ choices about how to allocate class time across different instructional activities, for example, lecturing, open discussion, or individual practice. Our data come from secondary schools in England, specifically classes preceding GCSE exams. Students score higher in math when their teacher devotes more class time to individual practice and assessment. In contrast, students score higher in English if there is more discussion and work with classmates. Class time allocation predicts test scores separate from the quality of the teacher’s instruction during the activities. These results suggest opportunities to improve student achievement without changes in teachers’ skills.
Policy makers periodically consider using student assignment policies to improve educational outcomes by altering the socio-economic and academic skill composition of schools. We exploit the quasi-random reassignment of students across schools in the Wake County Public School System to estimate the academic and behavioral effects of being reassigned to a different school and, separately, of shifts in peer characteristics. We rule out all but substantively small effects of transitioning to a different school as a result of reassignment on test scores, course grades and chronic absenteeism. In contrast, increasing the achievement levels of students' peers improves students' math and ELA test scores but harms their ELA course grades. Test score benefits accrue primarily to students from higher-income families, though students with lower family income or lower prior performance still benefit. Our results suggest that student assignment policies that relocate students to avoid the over-concentration of lower-achieving students or those from lower-income families can accomplish equity goals (despite important caveats), although these reassignments may reduce achievement for students from higher-income backgrounds.
Education is one of the most important public goods provided by modern governments. Yet governments worldwide seldom perform well in the sector. This raises the question: why do governments preside over poor education quality? This article answers this question with evidence from Tanzania. Using data from surveys, administrative reports, and policy documents, it analyzes changing goals of education policy and associated impacts on access and learning over time. The main finding is that learn- ing has not always been the goal of schooling in Tanzania. Furthermore, for decades the government rationed access to both primary and secondary schooling for ideological reasons. These past policy choices partially explain contemporary poor outcomes in education. This article increase our understanding of the politics of education in low-income states. It also provides a corrective against the common assumption that governments always seek to maximize the provision of public goods and services for political gain.
An increasing share of new teachers enter the profession through alternative certification programs. While these programs increase teacher supply in areas facing critical shortages, they also increase instability in local teacher labor markets via high teacher turnover. A fundamental question is what effect these programs have on student achievement over the long run. To address this question, I study Teach For America (TFA) teachers working in New York City (NYC) between 2012 and 2019. This research brief reports on three key findings. First, I document five-year cumulative retention rates and find that, as expected, retention is lower for TFA teachers (25%) than for other NYC teachers working in similar schools (43%). Second, I estimate within-teacher returns to experience using a teacher fixed effects strategy and find that TFA teachers who continue teaching through year five improve at double the rate of the average NYC teacher. Third, I model the joint relationship between turnover and performance over time and find that the TFA performance advantage is large enough to offset turnover costs. I conclude that the net effect of TFA hiring on student achievement is positive in the short and long run.
Despite recent evidence on the benefits of same-race instructor matching in K-12 and higher education, research has yet to document the incidence of same-race matching in the postsecondary sector. That is, how likely are racially minoritized college students to ever experience an instructor of the same race/ethnicity? Using administrative data from Texas on the universe of community college students, we document the rate of same-race matching overall and across racial groups, the courses in which students are more or less likely to match, the types of instructors students most commonly match to, and descriptive differences in course outcomes across matched and unmatched courses. Understanding each of these measures is critical to conceptualize the mechanisms and outcomes of same-race matching and to drive policy action concerning the diversity of the professoriate.